Workshop held on the WHO-UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme

A national workshop to reconcile differences in official estimates of water supply and sanitation coverage with those reported by the WHO-UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) was held on 12 January 2009.  The Deputy Secretary (Water Supply), Local Government Division chaired the meeting.  Around 20 sector professionals from the Department of Public Health Engineering, Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, International Training Network, WHO and UNICEF Country Offices attended the meeting.

Dr Rifat Hossain from WHO Headquarters briefly explained the objectives and analytical framework of the JMP, and presented the definitions used in categorising improved and unimproved sanitation as per the JMP “ladder approach”.  The discussion focused on differences in the definitions used during data collection, with the conclusion that this was the root-cause of the discrepancy in estimates of sanitation coverage.  The principle issues revolves around the diversity of opinion concerning which sanitation facilities can be counted as ‘improved’ or as ‘unimproved’.  It was agreed during the meeting that more disaggregated typologies with regard to latrines would help to avoid confusion and mistakes in future data collection surveys.